The Verge reviews the BlackBerry Q10: "Maybe you're here for the keyboard. As superb as the Q10's physical keyboard is, I keep thinking about the six-year evolution of the soft keyboard since the introduction of the original iPhone. They've gotten so good on every platform - iOS, Windows Phone, Android, even BlackBerry's own Z10. The argument used to be that physical keyboards were for serious users who needed to burn through email, and I just don't think that holds water anymore. Yes, this is the best of a dying breed, but for the life of me, I don't know why someone who's accustomed to a full-touch phone would come back to this." I disagree. Touchscreen keyboards have not improved considerably at all - in fact, I find them just as terrible and unpleasant to use as when they were first introduced on Palm OS and Windows Mobile. A properly designed hardware keyboard - preferably landscape (like on the E7), but portrait will do too - will always run circles around those frustrating software keyboards. Major respect to BlackBerry for sticking to their guns. To anyone making a quality phone with a landscape hardware keyboard (rebadge an E7 for all I care) running Android or Windows Phone: please, take my money. Please.

I think you're right about physical keyboards Thom. There's no getting around the fact that you can't feel the edges of on-screen keys, no matter how many marvellous thumb twisting new layouts pop up.

This was my feeling until recently, as well.

My current phone is the Samsung Epic 4G (Sprint's Galaxy S derivative) with a landscape slider keyboard, running CM10.1, preceded by the Samsung Moment with a similar landscape slider. For a long time, I found the slider keyboards indispensable for composing longer emails and typing in difficult URLs.

However, in the last few months I find that I hardly use the slider keyboard at all. Swype got so good that I am now much faster and more accurate at entering any kind of text with it, and then Android Jelly Bean came along with its own gestural keyboard which is just as good, more tightly integrated with the OS, and offers more languages.

Honestly, I don't think I'll ever look for a phone with a physical keyboard again. At this point, it just takes up space and weight and I don't feel any lingering need for it.